1993 opened a specialty store named Adam and Eve Health Care Center in Fuchengmen, Beijing, with a storefront of about 20 square meters, and all kinds of sex products were placed in categories. The owner's name is Wen Jingfeng and Master Tao. Maybe he didn't expect that in two weeks, he would have his first 96% business, and he unconsciously opened an era about sex in China.
However, due to the conservative social concept, the sex toy market, which has been developed for more than 20 years, has been growing in a depressed way. Until 2 1 century, especially in the last two years, with the liberation of sex, people no longer talked about transsexuality, and interesting enterprises were no longer just dark shops selling simulated toys on the street, but formed a preliminary and complete industrial chain. Coupled with the rise of internet e-commerce and the influx of capital, the sex toy industry has finally stood in the sun, gradually giving birth to a market scale of 100 billion.
According to the report on 20 18q 1 China sex toys released by Ai Media Consulting on May 8, the sex toys market in China reached188.7 billion yuan in 20 17, and it is estimated that the sex toys market in China will exceed 60 billion yuan in 2020.
In the huge market, thousands of large and small companies are active. According to incomplete statistics of Hunting Cloud, there are six domestic interest companies landing on the New Third Board: Wan Defu (833877), Si Nuo Science and Technology (836309), Lover (835587), Taqu (837472), Taohuawu (838664) and Chunshuitang (839466).
1000 billion market, but generally lose money.
20 18 April, these six new third board adult sex companies published their annual reports one after another. Combined with the annual report released by the company before, Hunting Cloud Network selected the data from 20 15 to 20 17 as follows:
As can be seen from the financial report data, the profitability of the six companies listed on the New Third Board is not optimistic.
Lover health and Chunshuitang are in a state of loss for three years. In 20 17 years, the health loss of lovers reached 40 million yuan, an increase of100000 yuan over the previous year. Chunshuitang 20 17 lost 4.25 million yuan, but its stop loss was 20 million yuan compared with 25 million yuan of 20 16. Taohuawu also made a profit of 600,000 only at 20 15, but it lost money continuously for the next two years.
Although the overall situation is not good, the financial situation of Wan Defu, North Technology and Hequ is profitable, mainly because these two companies are mainly engaged in the research, development, production and marketing of family planning products, condoms and daily-use plastic products, and the income from sex toys accounts for a relatively small proportion of their total income, and their market share in the whole sex industry is also very small.
Capital enters the sex market.
Just as the public chooses to avoid talking about sex toys, the lack of capital has been hindering the accelerated growth of the sex toy industry. It was not until 20 12 that Shenzhen Venture Capital invested 300 million yuan in lovers, and the shortcomings of capital began to change.
At present, in the whole sex industry, at least 30 companies in China have obtained financing, with the total amount of public financing exceeding 6,543.8 billion yuan, attracting at least 30 well-known investment institutions, including Jingwei China, Hongtai Fund, Tongchuang Ye Wei, Meihua Angel Venture Capital and Chen Da Venture Capital. International companies including Wangguo International, individual investors including Xue Manzi, and many ordinary users also participated in the investment and crowdfunding of the sex industry.
Careful observation shows that most interesting companies get financing around 20 14.
Why has the sex industry, which has been at a low tide, suddenly poured in a lot of capital in the past two years? Lin Degang, founder of Chunshuitang, told Hunting Cloud for two reasons.
The first is the change of investors' attitude towards the sex industry. In the early years, China's policy on adult sex industry was not very clear, and it was a question whether the project could withdraw from IPO. However, in recent years, with the more open social concept and the warmer policy environment, enterprises have listed the New Third Board, and investors have gradually dispelled this concern.
Secondly, there was still a lack of industry giants in China at that time, but later, with the gradual growth of companies such as Lover, Chunshuitang and Taqu, and the listing of the New Third Board, the pulling effect of the demonstration effect increased the confidence of the outside world in the industry and invested more funds.
So, what do investors think of this investment boom?
Ma Yanchao, vice president of Tongchuang Ye Wei, told Hunting.com that the small peak of capital in the sex industry is actually not a fire in the sex industry, but a problem in the investment industry. There was a lot of hot money in those two years, and there were not many good projects in the circle. Everyone is chasing concepts.
Ma Yanchao further explained that taking the e-commerce platform as an example, the two monopoly giants, JD.COM and Tmall, have run out of horizontal e-commerce, and the new concept of vertical e-commerce suddenly came to power, so a lot of capital came here.
It was also during this period that Chunshuitang, a vertical e-commerce company in the layout industry, received investment, and Taohuawu and orange adults began to lay out online and offline at the same time.
However, the influx of capital has not brought the sex industry to a climax. With the influx of capital, a large number of fun startups have suffered huge losses and closed down.
Ma Yanchao said that in 20 14, due to the call of innovation, the dream of getting rich overnight blossomed everywhere in China, and more than 300 companies doing fun poured in at one time, mostly small teams.
They only know how to make products, not how to promote them. It often takes seven or eight months to develop an electric toy or an intelligent product that can interact remotely. When the money burned out, it died.
Loss-making, bankruptcy and bankruptcy interest industries have suffered heavy losses after two years of skyrocketing. The declining market has also caused investors to lose confidence in the industry, and the enthusiasm for capital has begun to fade.
G point that the industry can't reach.
Song Bo, the founder of Libo Technology, believes that the sex industry is currently facing several major problems, including weak brand awareness, single product quality and single channel, which leads to the lack of diversified well-known brand matrix in the industry, lack of industry standards for products and limited channel marketing and promotion.
First of all, the core pain point is the lack of independent brands in the domestic sex toy market, most of which are foreign brand foundries. Although 70% of the world's sex toys are produced in China, and most of them are found in China by brands from Europe, America, Japan and South Korea, rather than products independently developed by China, this is definitely not the industrial structure that a country with the largest output of sex toys in the world should have.
Song Bo explained that from the perspective of industrial chain, the sex industry is divided into five links: production, brand, channel, sales and service. If the quality of production can't keep up, it will be difficult to establish a brand, and the brand will have no channels and sales, thus falling into a vicious circle.
From several sex toy companies that have been listed, it is not difficult to find that they all have one thing in common: they attach importance to product sales and neglect or neglect product research and development and production, but the value chain of sex toys is mainly concentrated in the hands of high-end brand manufacturers. Recognizing this, Libo Technology decided to build its own factory and build its own brand, becoming the first enterprise in the industry to build a complete industrial chain of interesting industries.
Secondly, the advertising communication effect is poor. At present, the government's regulations on sex toys marketing are still very strict. The government clearly stipulates that it is forbidden to open adult media advertisements and upload adult pictures and videos in product descriptions. Moreover, there is almost no word-of-mouth marketing in the domestic adult products industry, and no one is embarrassed to share their user experience with others. In this way, there is no way to make large-scale advertisements for sex toys, and it is impossible to repeatedly appeal to everyone with high-frequency words.
Liu Bo, the founder of Mi Yue Science and Technology, said in an interview with Hunting Cloud. When shooting advertisements, we let the models wear sweaters, but they can't show their faces.
If the first two ills can be solved by increasing innovation and slowing down policies, then the third pain point is hard to overcome: as far as sex toys are concerned, the increment of this market is limited and there will be no explosive growth.
Although with the opening up of ideas, the public's acceptance of sex products has increased, and the absolute consumption will also increase, but there is an upper limit to this growth. This is because 18 ~35-year-old young people are high-frequency users of sex toys, and the number of young people is basically fixed, and the growth is slow, so there will be no sudden explosive growth, and the sex market naturally has a ceiling.
How to play the sex industry?
So, can the sex toy industry in the 100 billion market only be a pit?
After feeling the cruelty of reality, players in the sex market are no longer obsessed with sex toys, but begin to explore new ways of playing from kidney-walking to heart-walking. Sex toys are becoming more and more asexual and artistic.
Chunshuitang began to focus on hormone economy, and laid out gender ecology around sexual health, sexual happiness and sexual intimacy, including Aishi Couples Hotel, dust-free workshop medical instrument factory, etc., and strived to build itself into a relatively comprehensive enterprise integrating R&D, manufacturing and retail.
Fans with a huge business layout are not satisfied with simply doing OEM. On 20 12, Lover acquired TopcoSales, one of the three top brands in the United States. Through this acquisition, the company has a series of internationally renowned brand markets such as TOPCOSALES, LURE, CYBERSKIN and CLIMAX. At the same time, it also holds shares in a number of companies, such as IdealResourcesInc and Hangzhou Adult Beauty E-commerce Co., Ltd., whose operations directly increase the cost of the Group.
With 45 million users, Taqu has become one of the largest sexual health product exchange communities in China. In the second half of 20 16, Taqu successively opened franchise stores such as Taqu Tmall franchise store and Taqu JD.COM flagship store; In the second half of 20 17, we tried various businesses such as gender consultation and gender medical treatment. The new business also made him perform well in this year's financial report, realizing the counterattack of turning losses into profits.
Enthusiasts, other interests and Chunshuitang are all positive changers in the industry, jumping out of the original manufacturer's position and expanding their business map from the aspects of brand, R&D and channels. The principle of venture capital is to invest in the future. Only by jumping out of the inherent mode of producers can we bring infinite possibilities to the development of enterprises, otherwise what is the difference with bank lending? Even if small manufacturers can maintain stable profits and reformers suffer losses in the early stage of development, institutions will not choose this so-called; Golden beans; Because there is no investment value. Li Yang, general manager of Chen Da Venture Capital Zhejiang Branch, said in an interview with the media.
From talking about transsexuality to spending money on sex, the future market potential of the sex industry is huge. But how to solve the current problems and give consumers a more intimate experience may be the correct way to play the sex industry to a climax.
Source: Hunting Cloud Network